Every year state and local education agencies establish and promote reading assignments such as particular book assignments, summer assignments and associated summer reading requirements. These reading based assignments are endorsed for a variety of reasons such as combating summer learning loss, parental involvement initiatives or in response to public laws most notably the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Often, the reading assignments are planned in conjunction with classroom assignments scheduled for an academic time period (e.g., for classes the following academic year or semester). Moreover, it can be the case that students' fulfillment of these assignments (e.g., summer reading assignments) and students' readiness to discuss these assignments may not be optional. School administrators are experiencing increased pressure to “show” results of improved achievement. These pressures have transferred to educators, elementary and secondary school students and their parents and/or guardians. The education ecology has rapidly changed yet the resources and tools that support those involved to keep pace with those changes have been slower to evolve.
There are numerous inefficiencies within administrative systems to communicate requirements and guidance to members of the community. There are also numerous difficulties and obstacles members of the community encounter when attempting to respond to announced reading requirements.
One example has to do with a student and parent attempting to locate a required book. Ideally they may visit their local bookstore and immediately locate and purchase the required book. On many occasions, instead, the student and parent travel from bookstore to bookstore in search of a title for which 19 other classmates are in pursuit. The local bookstore's manager may be confronted with 15 disappointed consumers because the bookstore only had 5 copies of the required book in stock yet 20 students needed that particular book. The local bookstore may have lost those sales and perhaps future customers.
Further along the book supply chain, the distributor and publisher may be looking toward historic sales data to plan which books to produce and distribute, yet now many school districts are assigning, in addition to required books, a requirement that students read an additional book from a menu of selected titles. Traditional historic sales data would be used to forecast and manage inventory. Schools are doing business differently now which becomes disruptive to traditional business planning and decision making.
In addition, parents need tools that will assist them in making informed decisions regarding reading requirements and guidance and schools need tools that relieve administrative burden in effectively communicating, sharing information and knowledge with its immediate constituents (students, parents, faculty, staff and administrators) as well as the community at large such as bookstores, distributors and publishers who provide support for education in both direct and indirect ways.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method, system and apparatus that serves as a centralized clearinghouse that can efficiently collect, aggregate, process, recombine, present and disseminate in contextually appropriate forms, real-time information about books associated with curriculum requirements and guidance of education administrators such as public and private elementary, secondary and post secondary schools.
Thus, according to one aspect of the invention, a system is provided to remedy the difficulties, obstacles and inefficiencies encountered by several constituencies in need and/or pursuit of: data and contextual information; access to products, services and resources; information and knowledge sharing; conducting public policy and consumer research; development and administration of public policy; and, conducting trade, loan and commerce of products, services and resources as it relates to books associated with curriculum requirements and guidance of schools.
There are several additional or alternative aspect and/or advantages of this invention including:
a. providing delivery of a dynamic registry of books associated with curriculum requirements and guidance of schools for the benefit of the general public.
b. to provide the delivery of a dynamic registry of books associated with curriculum requirements and guidance of schools for the benefit of the businesses that would have a need or interest in this information.
c. to provide real-time market demand data for books.
d. to provide projected market demand data for books.
e. to provide historical market trend data related to books.
f. to provide consumer products information and serve as a consumer products information resource.
g. to serve as an education administration tool and resource.
h. to serve as a public education resource.
i. to provide a method, system and apparatus of promotion, sale and distribution of books and related information, products, services and resources.
j. to serve as a customer service management tool for business enterprises.
k. to serve as a supply chain management tool for business enterprises.
l. to serve as an inventory management tool for business enterprises.
m. to serve as a demand modeling tool for business enterprises.
n. to serve as a market analysis tool.
o. to serve as a research tool.
p. to serve as a dynamic registry of books.
q. to provide a method, system and apparatus for delivering the objects described above.
r. to provide a method, system and apparatus for modeling real-time, projected and historical market demand for books within the U.S. and international academic sectors.
s. to provide a method system and apparatus for modeling education achievement data.
Of course none of these aspects and/or advantages are necessarily required of the present invention unless otherwise stated. Further objects and advantages will become apparent from a consideration of the ensuing description and drawings.